In my last blog entry, I questioned whether the RSPCA’s endorsement of certain meat and egg products (from companies who raise both free-range and caged animals) is somehow reinforcing that norm, by appearing to condone the actions of these companies in general. It’s a valid question, and not a new one - read the transcript of this Four Corners report for both sides of the debate.

Jane Speechley, the RSPCA’s public relations officer, replied with a pertinent point.  Organisations like the RSPCA need money.  And corporations have money.  Do you take it and use it to further your efforts, effectively ‘working within the system’.  Or do you refuse to ‘sell out’ and accept that you may have a smaller reach? 

It’s certainly not a problem that is exclusive to the RSPCA.  I recently worked on the production of an environmental education program that was funded by grants from government and industry – few of the industry partners had perfect environmental records, but without the money there was no program.   

I think that the issue some people have with the RSPCA’s affiliation with companies like Pace Farm is that the RSPCA has always been considered quite a progressive and proactive organisation – and perhaps it seems like a ‘one step forward, two steps back’ kind of approach. 

I appreciate your response Jane, and I’m afraid I don’t have an answer to your question – that’s why I raised this topic in the first place!  But I think that the more we talk about these issues, the better it is.  Food production seems to have become something of a sacred cow in today’s society.  Many meat-eaters express a vague uneasiness about the way that factory-farmed meat is produced, but find it more palatable to just not think about it, than to have to confront their consciences and question their moral choices.   

Bringing factory farming methods into the public realm for discussion and debate is vital, and is one of the reasons that I am writing – and hopefully you are reading – this blog! 

The RSPCA endorses Pace Farm’s barn laid eggs range (and receives a healthy paycheck of over $100,000 in ‘egg royalties’ from Pace every year in return for their use of the RSPCA’s Cruelty Free logo).  But Pace Farm does more than just rear hens in barns.  Their facilities house over 2 million egg-producing hens, the majority of which are reared in the very type of battery cage systems that the RSPCA is publicly opposed to. (See details of their campaign here)    

It reminded me of a recent blog post I’d read, questioning the worth of trying to promote more humane methods of animal husbandry in industrial farming – to have fewer hens per cage, for example, or a little more space for intensively reared pigs – when really the whole concept of industrially reared animals is fundamentally flawed, based as it is on inhumane, unhealthy and environmentally damaging practices.

It’s an interesting dilemma.  Is the RSPCA’s support of Pace Farm justifiable, because it promotes incremental change in the industry, or have they simply become accomplices in a blatant case of animal ethics greenwash??

The Urban Agriculture Network recently reported that Brisbane has become “the first city in the world to include both urban agriculture and green roofs in an action plan to meet predicted global climate change challenges”.

It’s an inspiring move.  The dual challenges of climate change and increasing oil scarcity are forcing us to acknowledge that fossil fuel based transport use must be dramatically reduced.  Yet, most conventional food supply chains rely heavily on transport.  It is only by decentralising and localising food production systems that we can effectively shorten these supply chains, reducing the distance from producer to consumer. 

Imagine an apartment building with a rooftop garden that is used to grow food for the residents, on a co-operative basis.  The need for food transportation is effectively eliminated.  Money is saved, air pollutants reduced, carbon emissions cut (in fact, a roof food production system could even be considered ‘carbon positive’ since it absorbs CO2 from the atmosphere).  And this is to say nothing of other benefits in regards to improved thermal efficiency of the building, reduced stormwater runoff, increased amenity and aesthetic value, and so on.   

Due to our reliance on road-based transport over such a large geographical area, Australia is in a particularly vulnerable position when it comes to the imminent oil shortages and increasing fuel prices of the near future.  (To read more about oil vulnerability, click here).  Reducing food miles is going to become essential if we Australians are to check our dangerous reliance on fossil fuels. 

But less stick, and more carrot: greening our cities from the roof down is also just a mind-bogglingly cool concept.  I love the idea in the same way that I love wind turbines: concrete reminders that for all our technical innovation, it is often in nature that we find the simplest, most beautifully efficient solutions.    

And I also love the idea that there is this whole other world above our eye-line that we never think about – a world that may hold at least a small part of the answer to many of our most pressing environmental problems…

The city just got a whole lot roomier.

The Urban Orchard was initially formed to allow people with backyard fruit trees to get together with others in their local area and swap surplus produce that would otherwise go to waste.  So someone with a plum tree, for example, could swap their excess plums for some other fruit that they didn’t have – apricots, say, or lemons or figs.  Quickly, though, the project expanded to include vegetables, herbs, seeds and plants, and even home-made jams.  Members now meet once a week at the CERES market in Brunswick East, where they swap produce, as well as gardening advice, recipes and general neighbourly chit-chat.   

As well as the simple pleasures of being able to grow and share one’s own food, the program has a myriad of beneficial outcomes: it reduces food miles and environmental impacts associated with food production and transportation; it supports biodiversity through seed saving and sharing; it encourages the consumption of healthy, seasonal produce; and it strengthens local community networks.

It has been a fascinating process to visit and interview members of the group.  Their gardens range from the modest to the awe inspiring – it’s amazing to see how productive a small urban backyard can actually be. 

But it is inevitable that as cities grow, the space for gardening will shrink.  Like most Australian cities, Melbourne’s long-term urban planning vision involves increased subdivision and the development of higher density housing in existing suburbs, to counter the negative environmental and social impacts of urban sprawl.

Will this trend towards increased densification reduce the ability to produce food in the city?  Take a look at the satellite-view of Melbourne on Google Maps and you’ll soon see a vast under-utilised area that could be turned into productive green space – the city’s rooftops.

Check out the Green Roofs for Healthy Australian Cities blog to learn more about green roofs and urban rooftop ‘micro-farming’.  The benefits and possibilities seem endless, and extend far beyond urban agriculture:  

“Green roofs can provide a wide range of public and private benefits, including significantly reduced fossil energy use, reduced peak runoff of roofwater, aesthetically pleasing cityscapes, longer roof life, and reduce ‘heat island effects’ of cities.”
  - Green Roofs for Healthy Australian Cities

There is some innovative research and development in this area going on in Queensland at the moment, including a CQU study looking at the production of ‘roof-food’ using urban organic waste.  Read about it at the Urban Agriculture Network blog. 

Also, have a look at this post on Dwellblog for some awesome photos of green roofs in the US and Europe.  And more inspiring pics here, at Urban Agriculture online.

By the way, if you haven’t heard of George Monbiot, then now’s your chance to check out one of the best writers and most lucid thinkers of the 21st century…in my humble opinion. 

Many seafood-eaters know that there’s a list of endangered, overfished and unsustainably managed species that should be avoided.  But navigating the endless choices of wild caught, farmed, imported and local seafood is not so simple.  Part of the problem lies in the fact that, until recently, there was no standardised system for naming and marketing fish in Australia.   

Many of our fish species are known by more than one name.  It’s a relic of Australia’s diverse cultural history: immigrants faced with unfamiliar Australian fish gave them names from their home countries.  These names changed from state to state, and from region to region. Even fishmongers in the same street would refer to the same fish with different names.  This led to confusion and even deliberate mislabelling.  For example, when a campaign to save the overfished Orange Roughy in the 90s led to a fall in its popularity as a table fish, many fishmongers simply started selling it under its alternative names of Perch or Sea Perch.
   
The other problem is the lack of freely available information.  In the United States, the Monterey Bay Aquarium runs a Seafood Watch program that produces comprehensive, free downloadable guides for seafood consumers according to region, as well as printable pocket-size guides that shoppers can carry with them.   

The Australian Marine Conservation Society (ACMS) have produced a similar guide for our waters called the Australian Sustainable Seafood Guide.  However, to access information in the guide, you must visit the website, pay for a hardcopy version of the guide, then wait to have it posted to you.  Not very convenient if you’re trying to decide what to buy for supper that night.

If AMCS are really serious about protecting marine ecosystems and fish stocks, and they want Australian consumers to be proactive about choosing sustainable seafood, then they need to make this information easily accessible and free of charge. 

We live in an age of instant information: we expect the answers to all our questions to be at the ends of our google-savvy fingertips.  Forcing well-intentioned consumers to buy a hardcopy version of the Guide seems counterproductive to the goals of encouraging ethical eating, not to mention an unnecessary waste of resources. 

The Sustainable Seafood Guide should be up on the ACMS website, and regularly updated, not hidden away in some storeroom, printed in permanent ink. Presumably the not-for-profit organisation sells the information to cover their costs, but surely they can find another revenue for money raising; one that doesn’t undermine the effectiveness of their campaign?? 

But does it matter?  After all, you can have the best intentions in the world, but without good food to back it up, an eco-friendly concept restaurant wouldn’t survive in the cut-throat Melbourne food scene for more than a few months.  And SOS has done more than survive.  Judging by the regularly full tables, the notoriously fickle Melbourne dining public is lapping it up.  So hats off to Mathis for having the foresight to recognise a potential niche market and develop the concept into a successful business.  It certainly can’t hurt if more people are discovering, through SOS, that fine-dining menus can be bereft of steak and still do creative and satisfying food. 

As expected, a meal at SOS is on the pricey side, with entrees averaging 20 bucks a pop and mains in the low 30s.  But, as is also to be expected, the food is well executed: there is no doubt that head chef Richard Hooper knows how to cook a fish.  All the seafood choices on the menu are claimed to be “sustainably produced and ethically harvested”, guided by the Australian Marine Conservation Society’s Australian Sustainable Seafood Guide.  To my admittedly untrained eye, though, there seems some cause for that earlier cynicism.  My copy of the guide proclaims Trevally as an overfished species that should be avoided, yet here it is on the SOS menu.  And a green papaya salad, presumably made with papayas shipped down from Queensland or the Northern Territory, can hardly be claimed to be ‘local produce’. 

Dishes at SOS also contain a few interesting ingredients that rarely grace restaurant menus, like spelt, farro and gluten-free maize.  Again, the cynic in me rears its ugly head to ask if the use of non-hybrid grain varieties is a conscious part of SOS’s sustainable food philosophy, or just an exercise in novelty. 

While its eco-marketing strategy may smell a little like greenwash, SOS still receives a star for effort and a step in the right direction.  It remains to be seen whether its success will spawn imitators and make ‘sustainable dining’ more than just a buzz-phrase for the food fad of the day. Let’s hope so.

Dolly Putin is the on-stage persona of Tasmanian comedian with a conscience, Naomi Edwards.  Dolly describes herself as a right-wing shock jockette (“an Andrew-Bolt kinda gal”).  Dressed in a cow-hide bodice and a slapper-from-the-suburbs combination of knee-high uggs and micro-skirt, she entered the stage devouring a Big Mac and lamenting the downsides of veganism (“youse can’t eat meat”).   

Last year, the nasally-inclined Dolly took on Greens senator Bob Brown in a ‘debate’ about the environment.  This year, she takes ethicist Peter Singer to task over issues discussed in his recently published book, The Ethics of What We Eat.

The problem is, there’s not whole lot of humour to be wrung out of the inhumane treatment of animals.  Topics of conversation weaved a wobbly path through turkey insemination to the treatment of dairy cattle; beak clipping of caged chickens; imprisonment of breeding sows in factory farmed pig production; and even the mercy killing of human infants.  Not exactly rolling-in-the-aisles stuff. 

The show consisted mostly of deliberately cheesy jokes and sexual innuendo on Dolly’s part, interspersed with several up-tempo musical numbers by the on-stage band and a cabaret-style guest appearance by a ‘pig’.  It was disjointed and not particularly well-scripted, eliciting more good-natured groans from the audience than real belly laughs.  But it did act as a light-hearted foil to Singer’s convincing and fairly sobering arguments. 

Hosted at the University of Melbourne and supported by Animals Australia, the show was largely a case of preaching to the choir: I doubt many of the middle-aged lefties and hippy students in the audience would have been popping down to Maccas for a post-theatre bite. 

However, Edwards must be applauded for tackling topics that just don’t get raised in public forums in Australia.  Until recently, the popular discourse around food has been dominated almost solely by nutrition and health issues.  This show comes as a welcome sign that food ethics is entering the public conscience, pushed along by populist books like Singer’s.  

Singer’s final message to the audience on the night was a simple one: if you aren’t inclined towards a vegan diet, then avoid factory-farmed produce and opt for free-range or organic meat, eggs and dairy products. 

As for Dolly, well I’ll be interested to see what she comes up with next year.  Gags about peak oil?  Wisecracks on sweatshops? 

Naomi Edwards may not be the funniest comedian at the festival but she has boldly gone where none have gone before, stretching the boundaries of comedy into unlikely and brave territory.

‘Low food literacy’, she says, is the cause of our unhealthy food choices.  Our supermarket trolleys are laden with overpriced and highly processed convenience foods, rather than the fresh and nutritious ingredients needed to prepare meals ‘from scratch’.  True.  This phenomenon however, is reflective, and indeed symptomatic, of a general lack of knowledge surrounding the entire food chain – not just the pointy end where we buy and ingest our food. 

Goodyer’s suggestion for improving food literacy, is – you guessed it – yet another cookbook: this particular one based on “teaching simple cooking techniques, food planning skills and basic nutrition in a way that’s easy to grasp”.   

I would argue that food literacy extends far beyond the simple notion of knowing what foods are healthy and developing the skills to prepare them. After all, cooking shows, diet manuals, and glossy recipe books proliferate, yet as a society we know less about food than ever in history. 

Food is such a primal part of our existence and a cornerstone of culture that there is something very unsettling in the thought of people sitting on the couch shovelling microwave pizza down their gullets whilst watching Jamie bang on about the merits of the organic chook, or Nigella extolling the virtues of locally-grown, in-season apples.  Prime-time ‘gastro porn’ shows, and their accompanying cookbooks, have almost become – like more traditional forms of pornography – a substitute for the real thing.

When big business wrested control of the food chain away from farmers and consumers, we settled for less in quality, in exchange for more in quantity.  As Michael Pollan asks in The Omnivores Dilemma, “Why do we care so much about choosing a mechanic or builder, but don’t know or care who produces the food we put in our bodies?”.  Our love affair with the supermarket has depersonalised food, to the point where we are not only unaware of who produces our food but often don’t even know what it really is.

There are signs, though, that the tide is beginning to turn.  With a growing awareness of the health and environmental implications of our food choices, has come a growing rejection of ‘anonymous food’.  Consumers are beginning to ask where and how their food is produced.  

In the United States, arguably the birthplace of the multinational-controlled industrial food chain, there is now a growing push for ‘local food security’ and a burgeoning number of new farmers markets and community-supported agriculture schemes.

In Australia, too, farmers markets are growing in popularity, forging direct links between the producers and consumers of food.  How do we retain and build on this momentum?  How do we take back control of our food?  It will require some serious social and political change.  Re-engaging ourselves with the way we eat is crucial, but it’s going to require more than a recipe book and a set of bathroom scales.

This blog is about food: what we eat; where it comes from; and how we assimilate it into our bodies and lives.  

It is a celebration of the infinite and ingenious ways that human cultures have learned to turn bundles of carbohydrates and protein into nourishment for the body and soul.

But I hope it to also be a discussion on the social and environmental implications of our appetites. 

Food is life. Yet, it seems that we are becoming more and more disconnected from the very things that sustain us. How many people actually know when asparagus is in season, or the best time of year for new potatoes? How many people understand and appreciate the water, energy, resources and labour that went into that bag of oranges, or how that bacon came to be on their plate?  And how many people pause to think about the real price of what they eat in today’s fast(er) food world? 

Intricate knowledge of food and the systems that provide it – whether they be traditional agricultural systems or the industrial food chain – seem to have been eroded from our collective consciousness.

American author and advocate of agrarian values, Wendell Berry, wrote that “eating is an agricultural act”(1). Journalist, Michael Pollan, argues that it is also an ecological act and a political act (2).  I agree. And it is these three acts of eating – the agricultural, the political, and the ethical – that I would like to explore in this blog.
 
But I would also like to add a fourth act of eating, perhaps the most important of all: the social act.  It is easy to let our food neuroses – obsessions with calorific counts, chemical composition and ethical dilemmas – obscure the pleasures of good food shared from a laden table.  So I hope to also share in this blog some of the joy and satisfaction that food brings us, in all its bounteous glory!  

More than anything, I wish to generate discussion – so please join in and share your opinions and comments.  Questioning our food doesn’t decrease its value. The pleasures of eating, as Michael Pollan says, are deepened by knowing: “To eat with a fuller consciousness of all that is at stake might sound like a burden, but in practice few things in life can afford quite as much satisfaction.”(2)

(1) Berry, W. 1990. What are People For?, Harper Collins, Canada.
(2) Pollan, M. 2006. The Omnivore’s Dilemma: The Search for a Perfect Meal in a Fast-food World, Bloomsbury Publishing Plc, London.